Burned Bridges

r mosquitoes and sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and ga

rred wood being incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode

hought on the matter, taken as the accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been administ

Across the table on which he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his guest with half

e by folk who-beggin' your pardon-ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an' clothes, for traps an

d expression that gathe

nary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant faith would be lacking if we did not try to extend our field, if we made no effort to bear light into the dar

ury since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to nothin'-an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the struggle for existence-but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do that. Ye'll find that neither red men

unbelievers, but he had never encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does materialistic philosoph

e little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action. His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged, one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was the end and aim of hu

t and follow me,'" Thompson declare

ppen nowadays-although some ither modern commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an

controversy, arose, took up a candle and s

ument going, Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject a theological motif into the conversation, he

scape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw Br

They're a simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him, dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an' if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet y

mpson replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do

ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o' doin'

n smiled, "both for your ho

nd slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at the gable end of his c

ream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning hours. Between that and steady p

illimitable forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and the fur-bearing animals and all the wild l

e Breyette turned the nose of t

he North had left him rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate, corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the impression that Lone Moose was a collecti

unity, however rude. Here he saw nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable discomfo

, M'sieu Thomp

sed himself. "Here?

aved a han

. "Two-three hundred yard. Dees w'er

iving. The forest enclosed him like the blank walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have told why he felt that strange form of depression. H

ods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe and asce

d been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This half-hearted attack upon th

scarcely credible. He suspected his guides, as he had

swered. "Let's tak' leetl

y made him disregard the spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his Master's servi

ccupied for some time," he said

to him, matters touched upon lightly, airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his prede

and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on a shelf an

ness of the home wherein Thompson had grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim s

his experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn ha